PHOTO:Gerard Byrne- Film Inside an Image
Since its invention, Photography has developed, changed, and been used for many different aims and purposes. With the breakthrough of digital images, and their omnipresence in social media, photography is once again in a period of change. This gives all the more reason to look back and consider the impact of its legacy on contemporary photography.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Moderna Museet Archive
The exhibition of Gerard Byrne’s “Jielemeguvvie guvvie sjisjnjeli/Film Inside an Image”, is part of the photographic project “Before and Behind the Lens”, which consists of a series of exhibitions, discussions and guided tours. The project examines the role of photographic images in art and the transformation of the medium since the early experiments with new technology in the 19th Century, to today’s explorations of the potential of the optical lens. Visually rich and intellectually complex, the work of Gerard Byrne in photography, film, theatre and multi-screen installation examines the slippage between time and the act of image creation. Characterised by a laconic humour, Byrne’s projects examine the ambiguities of language and of what is gained or lost in the translation from text to image. Gerard Byrne’s movie “Jielemeguvvie guvvie sjisjnjeli/Film Inside an Image”, was shot at the Biological Museum in Stockholm with stuffed Nordic animals against a backdrop painted by the artist Bruno Liljefors. The museum was built in 1893 and the world’s first natural history museum using a large-scale diorama, a format using genuine, three-dimensional objects against a painted backdrop that give the illusion of animals or people in their natural habitat. This August the museum will close for refurbishment indefinitely. The only source of light in the museum is from the windows in the ceiling. Byrne thus compares the museum to a camera, which creates its frozen images through light. When photography and film were still in their infancy, visitors had this opportunity to experience the Nordic wilderness in the middle of the city. Byrne films this setting in one unbroken tracking of the camera. The stuffed animals look as if they have paused in mid-movement.
Info: Curator: AMagnus af Petersens, Moderna Museet, Skeppsholmen, Stockholm, Duration: 8/4-21/5/17, Days & Hours: Tue & Fri 10:00-20:00, Wed-Thu 10:00-18:00, Sat-Sun 11:00-17:00, www.modernamuseet.se
